Resisting the politics of character assassination

I’ve had a bit of an issue getting this up, but near the top of the sidebar, you’ll notice a link to the Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund. This being a congressional election year, there are a lot of demands for money out there, and a lot of worthy candidates; but if you’re in a position to give political donations, I would strongly encourage you to send some money to the SPLDF.

You may remember that during and after the last presidential campaign, people with an axe to grind (whose scruples had served as the grindstone) launched a blizzard of frivolous ethics complaints against the Governor; though they were dismissed, one after the other, they still drove her legal bills up over half a million dollars. In response, she followed the well-trodden path of establishing a legal defense fund, called the Alaska Fund Trust, to raise money to cover those costs.

Apparently, however, the Obama administration and their minions couldn’t bear the thought that they might not succeed in bankrupting Gov. Palin, and there was an ethics challenge filed against the AFT. Barack Obama’s personal law firm, Perkins Coie, which is also counsel of record for the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Leadership Council, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (and Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard), produced an opinion declaring that fund in violation of Alaska law, which was then upheld by yet another Democrat. Said Democrat did concede that

Governor Palin was nevertheless following the express advice of one of her attorneys who told her the Trust complied with all laws and was indeed unassailable,

and thus that she wasn’t guilty of anything whatsoever; in that sense, she has once again been exonerated.

However, there is a complication as the result of all this: all donations made to the AFT must be returned, and while Gov. Palin hasn’t taken any money from the AFT, some of that money has gone to administrative expenses while the fund was in limbo. Also, of course, the process of returning donations will cost a noticeable amount of money. As such, it’s necessary for her new legal defense fund, the SPLDF, to raise $100,000 just to comply with the terms of this settlement—and that’s before they can raise any money to address any other legal costs.

If you donated to the AFT, I would certainly encourage you to take your donation, once it’s returned, and re-donate it to the SPLDF; but before that, please give a little more to enable it to cover the costs of shutting down the AFT.Some would no doubt consider this a partisan appeal, but I don’t; I think this is a necessary part of standing up for citizen government, and I’d support a Democrat just as well. Our government is supposed to be a government of the people, in which issues are decided in open debate and open votes, and anything that diminishes that diminishes our nation. The attempt by some to destroy a politician by bankrupting her with spurious legal assaults sets a precedent which is detrimental to our entire political culture, and should be resisted with extreme prejudice by honest voters on both sides of the political aisle. It was wrong to do this to Gov. Palin, it would be just as wrong to do it to a Democrat, and we ought to stand up and do everything we can to ensure that the next time someone contemplates trying such a thing for political gain, they’ll conclude that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

Sarah Palin doesn’t just represent conservatives over against liberals; she also represents the common people of America over against our elite. We need a lot more of the former in office, in place of some of the latter—representing both parties. I very much hope Carly Fiorina can beat Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate race in California this fall, but if Mickey Kaus had won the Democratic primary, I would have been rooting for him. I agree with him on far less than I do with Fiorina, but his independent voice within the Democratic caucus on the Hill would have been of immeasurable value.

As I wrote last year,

I firmly believe that one of the reasons why the political elite has tried so hard to marginalize and destroy this woman—elitists on the Right as well as on the Left—is that she’s not one of them; she’s not from the elite class, she didn’t rise through any of our political machines, and so she’s not beholden to them and they have no leverage on her. Our monoclonal political class likes its grip on power; sure, they have their ideological differences that reflect the differences in beliefs that exist in the rest of the country, but their deepest loyalty is to their class, their deepest commitment to business as usual. They are not truly representative in any meaningful sense.

If we want to change that, we need to elect people—liberals as well as conservatives—from outside that class, people who truly are a part of we, the people rather than “we, the Beltway.” Gov. Palin isn’t just a conservative politician, she’s a complete outsider to the Beltway, someone who came from a normal (if somewhat uncommon) American family, upbringing, and life. As such, she’s a test case for this: can any politician who is truly of the people, by the people, for the people long endure?

I don’t expect many liberals to support her, much less vote for her, because like anyone else, in general, liberals should vote for people who share their political principles, and she doesn’t; but I do think that liberals should be pulling for her to succeed, to thrive, to win re-election in 2010 and the GOP nomination in 2012, even if they then want her to lose in November. Why? Because if she succeeds, if she triumphs, she will show other potential citizen candidates that it can be done, and it can be endured, and it’s worth doing; if she succeeds, she will be followed, she will be emulated, and we will see others—in both parties—walking the trail she blazed. If Republican and Democratic voters are going to reclaim our parties for the principles in which they’re supposed to believe, it’s going to require candidates who are beholden to us rather than to the structures of those parties—and if that’s going to happen in our generation, it has to begin here, with Sarah Palin. We cannot let her be snuffed out if we want to see anyone else who isn’t machine-approved (and machine-stamped) run for anything much above dogcatcher.

As such, I’ll say it again: liberals who would like to see the Democratic Party break free of the corruptocrats who run it have just as much vested in Gov. Palin as conservatives who would like to see the GOP break free of the domination of its own trough-swilling pigs, and just as much reason to help her overcome this challenge.